Does India really need Wal-Mart?

Wade Rathke points us to some news that is really flying under the radar. There’s the possiblity that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might be headed to India to push an agenda which favors Wal-Mart.

Dharmendra Kumar, India FDI Watch Campaign director, alerted me to the Clinton visit because of widespread speculation that her real purpose is not to welcome a woman into power, which is one spin, or make an anti-Communist Cold War point, which is another spin, but to get involved in hard bargaining that Prime Minister Singh has been incapable of doing to muscle up on Banjeree to drop her opposition to the modification proposals.

This is actually a classic role of foreign policy, sometimes even the military gets involved on behalf of business interests. I can only remember what Smedley Butler said he did on behalf of the United Fruit Company. Does having a Wal-Mart in India allow us to export goods there? Not really since most of the stuff sold in Wal-Mart is sourced from China and other Asian countries. The profits from an Indian venture would just end up in the hands of the Waltons and Wal-Mart’s other shareholders I’d imagine.